Spatial negative priming without mismatching: Comment on Park and Kanwisher (1994) (original) (raw)

Attention: Some theoretical considerations

1963

The selection of wanted from unwanted messages requires discriminatory mechanisms of as great a complexity as those in normal perception, as is indicated by behavioral evidence. The results of neurophysiology experiments on selective attention are compatible with this supposition. This presents a difficulty for Filter theory. Another mechanism is proposed, which assumes the existence of a shifting reference standard, which takes up the level of the most important arriving signal. The way such importance is determined in the system is further described. Neurophysiological evidence relative to this postulation is discussed.

The significance of attention

2010

This dissertation investigates the nature, the phenomenal character and the philosophical significance of attention. According to its central thesis, attention is the ongoing mental activity of structuring the stream of consciousness or phenomenal field. The dissertation connects the scientific study of attention in psychology and the neurosciences with central discussions in the philosophy of mind. Once we get clear on the nature and the phenomenal character of attention, we can make progress toward understanding foundational issues concerning the nature and the structure of conscious mentality itself. We understand better how consciousness is connected to self-awareness and to agency, and we get a better grip on the nature of perceptual experience, the unity of consciousness, and its subjective character. The dissertation also aims at showing that the current empirical investigation of attention should be complemented with work at the level of generality that a philosophical analysis can provide; it shows how such an analysis is relevant for the scientific study of attention by providing a new conceptual framework and suggesting several new areas of research. i 1! The simplified scenario____________________________________________ 41! 2! Deflationary relationism ___________________________________________ 44! 3! Simple relationism _______________________________________________ 48! 3.1! Objects _____________________________________________________ 51! 3.2! Determinacy_________________________________________________ 54! 3.3! Foreground__________________________________________________ 57! 3.4! Prominence _________________________________________________ 59! 4! Impure relationism _______________________________________________ 63! 5! Reflexive relationism _____________________________________________ 68! 5.1! The view____________________________________________________ 68! ii 5.2! Characteristics _______________________________________________ 70! 5.3! Computational underpinnings ___________________________________ 74! 6! Summary and Outlook ____________________________________________ 77! 2 Attention as a Mental Activity ______________________________ 78! 1! A puzzle about perception _________________________________________ 80! 2! Activities and intentional actions ____________________________________ 84! 3! The temporal shape of activities _____________________________________ 89! 3.1! The linguistics of aspect________________________________________ 89! 3.2! From the linguistics of aspect to the metaphysics of temporal shape _____ 92! 3.3! Attending has the temporal shape of an activity _____________________ 97! 3.4! Activities in the weakest sense _________________________________ 102! 3.5! Activities in the weak sense____________________________________ 103! 4! The causal structure of activities____________________________________ 105! 4.1! Dretske on the causal structure of processes _______________________ 105! 4.2! Activities in the strong sense ___________________________________ 107! 5! Ways of attending _______________________________________________ 110! 5.1! The puzzle about perception solved (preliminarily) _________________ 110! 5.2! Ways of attending defined _____________________________________ 114! 6! Consequences __________________________________________________ 116! 6.1! Reflexive awareness is activity-awareness ________________________ 116! 6.2! Enacting perception: the better way______________________________ 119! 6.3! Explaining extramission beliefs_________________________________ 121! 7! Summary and Outlook ___________________________________________ 124! 3 Attention as Structuring of the Stream of Consciousness _______ 125! 1! The components of structuralism ___________________________________ 126! 1.1! The freedom component ______________________________________ 130! 1.2! The structure component ______________________________________ 133! 2! Precursors _____________________________________________________ 140! 3! Structuralism made precise ________________________________________ 144! iii 3.1! Basic ideas _________________________________________________ 144! 3.2! Attentional space (part 1)______________________________________ 148! 3.3! Attentional space (part 2)______________________________________ 152! 3.4! Neural underpinnings_________________________________________ 154! 3.5! Is attentional structure diaphanous?______________________________ 155! 3.6! Preview on the dynamics of attention ____________________________ 157! 4! Consequences __________________________________________________ 160! 4.1! A unified and holistic science of attention_________________________ 160! 4.2! Phenomenal entanglement _____________________________________ 161! 4.3! Structures of consciousness ____________________________________ 163! 4.4! Mental management__________________________________________ 164! 5! Summary and Outlook ___________________________________________ 165! 4 The Dynamics of Attention________________________________ 167! 1! The sub-personal account _________________________________________ 170! 2! The salience account _____________________________________________ 175! 2.1! The general idea_____________________________________________ 175! 2.2! Scientific evidence ___________________________________________ 177! 2.3! Encounters of salience: a preliminary analysis _____________________ 181! 2.4! The deflationary account of encounters of salience__________________ 184! 3! The experiential account of encounters of salience: salientishness _________ 186! 4! Constraints on salientishness ______________________________________ 190! 4.1! Salientishness comes in degrees ________________________________ 190! 4.2! Salientishness drives attention essentially _________________________ 190! 4.3! Salientishness implies no queer properties ________________________ 191! 4.4! Salientishness has no normative impact __________________________ 194! 4.5! Salientishness does not depend on any mind-to-world attitude_________ 196! 5! Salientishness as experiential potential_______________________________ 197! 5.1! The view___________________________________________________ 197! 5.2! Unifying voluntary and involuntary attention ______________________ 201! 5.3! Computational and neuronal underpinnings _______________________ 203! iv 6! Consequences __________________________________________________ 205! 6.1! The flux of attention__________________________________________ 205! 6.2! Intuitive reasoning ___________________________________________ 206! 6.3! Coordination problems________________________________________ 208! 6.4! Language and communication __________________________________ 210! 7! Summary and Outlook ___________________________________________ 211! 5 Attention and the Particularity of Consciousness _____________ 212! 1! Particularist relationism __________________________________________ 213! 2! Preliminaries ___________________________________________________ 218! 3! The attention argument ___________________________________________ 224! 4! In defense of attentional relationism_________________________________ 231! 4.1! Some intuitive considerations __________________________________ 231! 4.2! The argument from demonstrative reference_______________________ 233! 4.3! The explanation argument _____________________________________ 235! 4.4! Transition __________________________________________________ 238! 5! The hallucination argument against attentional relationism _______________ 239! 6! The smooth transition argument ____________________________________ 242! 6.1! The basic idea ______________________________________________ 242! 6.2! The argument _______________________________________________ 243! 6.3! Specific resistances at individual steps of the argument ______________ 248! 6.4! General resistances against the argument _________________________ 255! 7! An implementation and generalizations ______________________________ 259! 7.1! The natural implementation of particularist relationism ______________ 259! 7.2! Tentative generalizations to other forms of experience_______________ 264! 8! Summary and Outlook ___________________________________________ 266! 6 The Attentional Basis of Consciousness _____________________ 268! 1! Structuralism and the unity of consciousness __________________________ 268! 1.1! The phenomenal unity of consciousness __________________________ 268! 1.2! Sufficiency _________________________________________________ 272! v 1.3! Necessity __________________________________________________ 276! 1.4! Attention and split-brains______________________________________ 279! 1.5! The attention account of unity __________________________________ 288! 2! Is there consciousness outside attention? _____________________________ 289! 2.1! The possible centrality of all conscious events _____________________ 290! 2.2! The connectedness of all conscious events ________________________ 293! 2.3! The necessity of phenomenal unity ______________________________ 294! 2.4! Hemineglect ________________________________________________ 294! 2.5! Balint's syndrome ___________________________________________ 299! 2.6! Split-brains again ____________________________________________ 301! 3! Attention and the subjective character of consciousness _________________ 302! 3.1! Do all (possible) subjects always attend to something? ______________ 302! 3.2! Reflexive awareness and the subjective character of consciousness _____ 304! 4! Conclusion: the attentional basis of consciousness _____________________ 311! Appendix__________________________________________________ 315! Appendix 1: Experiments concerning attention without consciousness_________ 315! Appendix 2: Representationalism and spatial foreground ___________________ 323! Appendix 3: Alternative versions of particularist relationism ________________ 328! The Sensibilia View ______________________________________________ 329!...

A case for inhibition: visual attention suppresses the processing of irrelevant objects

Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2008

The present study investigated the ability to inhibit the processing of an irrelevant visual object while processing a relevant one. Participants were presented with 2 overlapping shapes (e.g., circle and square) in different colors. The task was to name the color of the relevant object designated by shape. Congruent or incongruent color words appeared in the relevant object, in the irrelevant object, or in the background. Stroop effects indicated how strong the respective area of the display was processed. The results of 4 experiments showed that words in the relevant object produced larger Stroop effects than words in the background, indicating amplification of relevant objects. In addition, words in the irrelevant object consistently produced smaller Stroop effects than words in the background, indicating inhibition of irrelevant objects. Control experiments replicated these findings with brief display durations (250 ms) and ruled out perceptual factors as a possible explanation....

The role of perceptual load in negative priming.

2000

Negative priming (NP) effects from irrelevant distractors were assessed as a function of perceptual load in the processing of prime targets. Participants searched for a target letter among a varying number of nontarget letters in the center of the display and ignored an irrelevant peripheral distractor. NP from this distractor was found to depend on the relevant search set size, decreasing as this set size was increased. The authors conclude that exhausting attention in relevant processing reduces irrelevant processing (e.g., N. Lavie, 1995), leaving less distractor processing to produce NP. This conclusion is consistent with recent reactive inhibition views for NP (e.g., G. Houghton, S. P. Tipper, B. Weaver, & D. I. Shore, 1996).

Bullot 2011 Attention, information and epistemic perception MIT

Attention became a topic studied in experimental psychology by the end of the nineteenth century. With the subsequent development of psychology, interdisciplinary research on attention became an integral part of the cognitive and medical sciences Braun, Koch, and Davis 2001;. Meanwhile, attention continues to raise a wide range of philosophical questions concerning, for example, sensory-motor control, perceptual reference, language understanding, social intentionality, and the neural correlates of consciousness. This chapter focuses on a question that is fundamental to bridging the gap between epistemology and biology: what is the role of attention in the acquisition of knowledge?